The Surprising Synergy of Medicine, Games, and VR was actually a crossover talk, serving as the last presentation of the single day AR/VR Symposium at MSU and launching Meaningful Play 2018, a leading conference on serious games, which are games that explicitly provide an additional benefit beyond entertainment, such as education, training, advocacy, or (as in this case) health care.

In this talk, Noah spoke about the potential for VR (virtual reality) to make a strong emotional connection, and the challenges presented using VR for medical games, specifically the issues (good and bad) with advancing technology. He transitioned to health care by discussing a pain control study where a child was distracted from a painful medical procedure (changing burn dressings) through a VR game, reducing anxiety and the need for sedatives.

His three top arguments for considering games for medical purposes:

Helping people

Challenging, exciting, and diverse development

Big market (especially with FDA clearance)

In support of the latter argument (as the first two are fairly self-explanatory), he mentioned that the pharmaceutical industry, just in the United States, has an annual turnover of 300 to 400 billion dollars. If therapeutic games could capture just 5% of that market, it would be close to the total value of the (entertainment) video game market. Food for thought.

Finally, Noah presented some quick case studies of companies/products that were having success in this field, including Akili Interactive, MindMaze/MindMotion, and Muse. It looks like a very interesting field, with funding available for successful ventures (albeit likely outside the reach of my micro-ISV).

Warm Up

This is my first proper conference in 4 years (since the 2014 edition of this same conference) and it is really convenient that it is held right here in my hometown. It is quite nice not having to worry about the expense and logistics of lodging. It has always been good to be able to actually walk to the venue in the past, too, but this time it started raining right as I left home, so I was damp when I arrived for the talk. Worse, the rain picked up on the way back, so I was totally drenched by the time I got back.

Being that I have been slightly out of the loop for a while, it was really comforting to have the elevator doors open to reveal just two people already in there, the aforementioned Noah Falstein, who I knew back in the day (but have not seen in person in 15-20 years), and Patrick Shaw of Stardock, who I know better and have seen much more recently.